Lamoureux’s dog occasionally dug pucks out of the grass along the edges of the lawn. As for the spacious yard itself? Under the wintertime weight of a rink, it has actually compressed. Particularly in the middle, it’s sunken.

But Lamoureux, single and without children, never resurrected the DIY arena. Instead, he put in a fire pit, added a sun deck.

Soon enough, the sole sign of the old occupants — who’d departed for Kingston, Ont., in the fall of 2005 — was a trickle of mail. Lamoureux would let it pile up, then give it return-to-sender treatment.

“One day, I was standing in my kitchen making a pot of coffee,” recalls Lamoureux. “My friend Steve (Parsons) was over. He was actually a scout with the Vancouver Giants at the time. He looked at this one envelope sitting on top that was from Hockey Canada, and it was addressed to Taylor Hall.

“He looked at me and goes, ‘Did Taylor Hall used to live here?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he goes, ‘Oh my God. Do you know who that is?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And he goes, ‘What do you mean you don’t know who that is? Did you watch the Memorial Cup? He was the MVP and he’s only 17.’ ”

His pal had been talking about the 2009 Memorial Cup. Attention grabbed, Lamoureux made sure he monitored Hall at the world junior championship this past winter, then last month at the 2010 Memorial Cup in Brandon. He was impressed by the Windsor Spitfires’ dazzler. “Such a fierce competitor,” says Lamoureux. “He plays with such energy, such reckless abandon. I thought, man, what an awesome player. Hard-working. Talented. Tough. Really something special.”

So when his hound recently uncovered another puck — this one with a Calgary Flames logo on it — Lamoureux set it aside. But, dogs being dogs, the keepsake got chewed to smithereens.

“So much for that,” he chuckles.

Lamoureux, 33, plans to be glued to his television on Friday night. He can see the Edmonton Oilers, holding the first overall pick of the National Hockey League draft, snapping up Hall.

“The Oilers do have an awfully good young team already,” says Lamoureux. “Imagine when (Jordan) Eberle and Hall get there . . . that team can’t stay down in the basement for long.”

But is it enough to make a lifelong Flames fan root for the crew up north? “Uh, that’s going to be difficult.”

Nor, Lamoureux jokes, is he going to be throwing open his doors to pilgrimage-making Oilers boosters. But he does relish his link — no matter how far removed — to greatness.

“It’s really awesome to have a very unexpected connection to a young hockey star,” says Lamoureux, who grew up in the city’s southwest. “It’s really cool. It made me a fan (of his) because of that weird connection. As a person who loves hockey, I just think it’s neat that, by complete coincidence.

“I spent my afternoons playing road hockey with my friends and skating on the pond all winter. I played hockey a lot. Any kid that gets into hockey dreams of being in Taylor Hall’s position some day.”

Steve Hall made sure his son always had somewhere to skate. Every winter.

From the time he was four till the family moved to Kingston nine years later, Hall knew ice — good ice — was literally steps away from his bedroom.

“You can’t call yourself a hockey dad, in my opinion, unless you know how to build a rink,” says Steve. “I’m going to (tick) people off by saying it, but that’s the truth.

“Alberta’s terrific — it’s the best place to build a rink, probably in the whole country. I always managed to get the rink in before anyone else and kept it later than anybody else. Anyone can build a rink when it’s minus-20, but try it when there’s a chinook blowing in. Not very easy.

“I’d go out there and water it every hour — on the hour — some days. Crazy. But there was a method to my madness. I knew my kid loved it. That’s why I did it.”

Pops had it down to a science, too. (Later, when asked for the secret to ice-making success, he sends an e-mail: “Tamp snowpack down with shoes (with) boards wired to the soles — then water with a hose till flat. Check for leaks and repeat!!”)

Understand, this just wasn’t some bumpy bit of business. There were nets, boards, lights. Smooth ice nearly encircling the joint.

“It was a heck of a lot of fun being a hockey dad and making rinks,” says Steve. “It was like Christmas for me to go find a new net for him.

“You know what? There’s something about building a rink that I found very peaceful. I really enjoyed it. Something just real fun to do. I didn’t do it to make Taylor go out to use it. I built it so, if he wanted to use it, he could.”

He could. And he did.

“One year, Taylor didn’t start school till 9:30 in the morning, so he’d go out and play hockey every morning for an hour,” says Kim Strba, Hall’s mother. “It was every day, several times a day. Christmas parties. New Year’s Eve parties for all his friends. It was the place to be.”

Steve recalls going to the movie Miracle — the Herb Brooks biopic — one night. Father and son got home at 10. “By 10:30, Taylor was out playing hockey.”

Hall doesn’t deny his stay-at-home obsession.

“Every day I was out there,” the 18-year-old says. “That’s maybe why I became the player I am and why I’ve been so fortunate. I loved playing out there. I loved playing with my buddies. T.J. Galiardi from the Colorado Avalanche skated on that rink. Those are pretty fond memories.”

For Galiardi, too.

“They’d have dinner ready, which was always good,” he recalls. “It’d depend on the night, but sometimes we’d have little games. When his dad was home, he’d actually go in net, which was pretty funny. I don’t even think he’d wear pads; he was kind of a warrior. It was always so cold and the ice was always pretty good. We’d stay out there for a few hours, basically every time I was over there.”

Steve doesn’t discount the bonus of having a backyard rink — “It helped Taylor out. It’s given him an edge, yes.” — but still shoves a pile of credit in the kid’s direction.

“In the end, he’s the guy who took those advantages and made them his own,” says Steve. “It was probably no accident that he became a very proficient hockey player. But it was Taylor Hall and his gumption and his passion . . . that’s taken him to where he is.”

And where is he right now? The head of his class of all draft-eligible teens of the hockey world.

Eye-catching is the lad’s steep trajectory. Hall may go No. 1 in the NHL draft.

He was selected No. 2 in the Ontario Hockey League’s draft, right after Ryan O’Reilly was taken by the Erie Otters.

But way back in the fall of 2004? As a 13-year-old, Hall was the 12th pick of the Bantam AAA Canucks. Put another way — in the three-team quadrant, more than 40 bantam-age players in northeast Calgary were chosen before him.

Kevin Willison, skipper of the Canucks, had nearly filled his roster with forwards when he gambled on the zippy-skating runt.

“He was just in the pack,” recalls Willison. “To find that little diamond in the rough was certainly huge for our success because you don’t know what these kids are going to do one year, two years, from now.”

One of the youngest on the squad, Hall ended up being named the most improved player. Numbers — a team-leading 63 points, including 31 goals, in 47 dates — tell some of the story.

“He was one of those kids who wanted to be out there all the time, so you had to rein him,” says Willison, whose squad ran the local table — winning the regular season, minor hockey week, the city championship.

“He had to understand the respect of his teammates . . . ‘You’re not a coach — the coaches will decide when you go on the ice, and with whom.’ He was a little bit cocky back in the day, but we kept both feet flat on the ground. Taylor bought in and just totally progressed.”

Did he ever.

“To see where he is today?” says Willison, now coaching at the Edge School. “Feather in his cap. Good for him. Because he had that work ethic, right?”

Mom had instigated this whole production, installing her boy in organized hockey when he was five.

“I just saw the registration in the paper,” Kim says. “I remember when his dad came home, I said, ‘I signed Taylor up for hockey today.’ ”

Steve — former receiver in the Canadian Football League (1983-86, Winnipeg and Ottawa), former member of the Canadian bobsled team (1987-96) — can also take a bow. And not only for those wonderfully maintained rinks.

Football taught Steve about physical preparation, about brute force. And bobsled? Sizzling down a track, he learned the difference one-tenth — or even one-hundredth — of a second can make. In other words, Pops has plenty of wisdom to pass on. Hall calls him before every game.

“We don’t necessarily talk about sports stuff,” says Steve. “Sometimes, it’s dad to son. Sometimes, it’s more sports related. Different things at different times, eh? There’s a lot of hockey that’s been played by Taylor in the last couple seasons . . . so you don’t want to browbeat the kid with preparation-type stuff. You’ve got to keep it fun, keep it light.

“When we do talk about sports, we don’t just talk about hockey. We talk about attacking the rim like LeBron James or serving with skill like Roger Federer or running with joy and spirit like Usain Bolt. We talk about all the different athletes. All sports are the same. It’s talent and athleticism that wins.”

Steve and Kim are normal hockey parents. At least, they try to be. Early mornings in the early days.

Ferrying Sonny to camps, to practices, to games.

When the Flames advertised an autograph session one day, Kim had loaded up the car with Hall and his pals, then bee-lined for the Saddledome. Photographic evidence shows Hall, then nine, smiling with rugged rearguard Bob Boughner. Yes, small world indeed.

(Note: Hall’s adoration of the local side cannot continue. “I’ve always loved the Flames, but this year I came to realize that I wouldn’t be able to be a part of their team unless they maybe trade up,” he says.)

But once Hall hit the big time, OHL-style, that put a crimp in the parents’ routine. They couldn’t see every game of their only child. After all, it’s a six-hour trek from Kingston to Windsor. One way. But every three weeks or so, they’d point west for the long drive. Phone calls are nice, but, with the snowballing hype around Hall, it was much better to see him in person.

“We tried to make sure Taylor was doing OK this year, just hoping that he was enjoying himself,” says Kim. “He’s been amazingly calm about the whole thing. I’ll ask him if he’s doing OK and he’s, like, ‘Yup, yup, doing fine.’ He just goes out, enjoys himself, acts like he’s 18 years old.”

Even though million-dollar paydays — and fame — await, parents are parents.

So when Hall lip-planted into the end-boards during the Memorial Cup’s opening game in Brandon, Dad seethed (because his son, while off-balance, had tried to land a hit on a heavier player) and Mom cried.

“Most frightening thing I’ve seen in my life. Just horrible,” says Kim. “I watched Taylor play for 13 years and I’ve never seen anything like that happen before, and I hope that I never ever have to see that again in the next 13 years.”

Minutes later, Hall, bloodied, got his revenge — authoring a highlight-reel goal against the Wheat Kings, slipping the puck through his own legs en route to a backhand beauty. “Times like that, you go, ‘OK, that was pretty cool,’ ” says Steve. “Taylor is Taylor, man.”

Taylor is the man, man.

Because Steve and Kim see their son featured on sports network telecasts, gracing the covers of hockey magazines, hear his game being dissected by the know-it-alls — all part of the run-up to next weekend’s draft. They can’t wait.

“A great day, a landmark day, in the life of somebody, isn’t it?” says Steve. “He’s our only kid and it’s certainly a proud time for Kim and I.”

Adds Kim: “Very exciting. We’re living the dream of every parent that’s ever put their child in hockey. It is weird getting calls from guys like you, you know what I mean? But it’s been very enjoyable. It’s been fun. A dream come true for

Almost Done!

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.